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It starts like any happy time at the beach. Little by little it was revealed how terrible the disaster was - voila! culture

2022-09-19T23:20:12.693Z


The work "Sun and Sea (Marina)" looks into the salty thoughts of those spending time at the beach. In what at first appears to be a dreamlike freedom, frustration with the modern world and the climate crisis is gradually revealed


It starts like any happy time at the beach.

Little by little it was revealed how terrible the disaster was

The work "Sun and Sea (Marina)", which appeared last week at the Israel Festival, invites viewers to look into the thoughtful and touching thoughts of those spending time at the beach.

In what at first appears to be a dreamlike freedom, frustration and anxiety about the modern world and the impending climatic catastrophe are gradually revealed

Nadav Menuhin

09/20/2022

Tuesday, September 20, 2022, 00:04 Updated: 02:02

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The opera "Sun and Sea" created by Rogila Bardjokeita, Vieva Grenita and Lina Laflita (courtesy of the Israel Festival)

Sometimes it seems that the world is withering between our fingers, while we are busy with childish repression.

Apparently we live in an era of unprecedented abundance of possibilities, content and resources, and the world is more open to us than ever before - and in fact this is the celebration before the catastrophe: the not-so-distant era when all our petty and silly quarrels will be meaningless, because it will be impossible to get out of most Heat, entire communities will be destroyed due to lack of water, life forms in the wild will become extinct, and natural disasters will hit those who survive one after the other.

The ominous hints are already out, but we are still dancing on the deck of the Titanic.



"Sun and Sea (Marina)", which is defined as an "operatic performance about a sinking world" and presented in recent days as part of the Israel Festival, touches exactly this sentiment.

This is a work behind which three artists from Lithuania stand: Rogila Bardjokeita, Vieva Greinita and Lina Laflita - a creator who has visited Israel several times in recent years, and moves in her work between the musical and the performative, and between the aesthetic and the critical.

"Sun and Sea (Marina)" was presented about three years ago at the Biennale in Venice, and won the main prize there.

The festival, in an unusual act and thanks to a donation, opened it to the general public in Israel for free.

In an era where the price of live cultural events is only increasing, those involved should be praised for this.

The light entertainment compared to the destruction.

From "Sun and Sea (Marina)" (Photo: Andrej Vasilenko)

The piece doesn't really have an end or a beginning, but it can be said that it is about an hour long and is performed repetitiously while new groups of spectators are introduced to it every half hour, as they look down on what appears to be a beach without sea in the middle of the Jerusalem theater, with sand and all.

After all, the beach is the perfect metaphor for youth and life, testing limits, falling in love, ice cream, hot sun and a caressing wind that comes and goes.

But what happens to a beach that the sea has left, with a broken heart of sand and stone?

What happens to a dead nature?



On the beach, about 15 players sunbathe, play cards, read, play with balls, listen to music and play on the phone.

Water - the elixir of life - is not.

One can only imagine them, and pretend it's a pleasant summer pastime of grieving couples and adults, families and children.

The occurrence is random, completely normal, and continues all the time.

People come and go, and the eyes of the spectators are constantly moving between one and the other.

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Everything is possible and innocent, but little by little a gloomy tone mixes in things.

From "Sun and Sea (Marina)" (Photo: Andrej Vasilenko)

Each one in turn sings, from the bottom of his heart, his story, which is sometimes seasoned with humor.

In this sense it is indeed a light opera, but there is nothing to panic if you are not a fan of the genre and have no background in opera.

It's accessible music, with electronic touches, designed to illustrate the epicness of the event - the light entertainment compared to the magnitude of the destruction.

Everything is nice and pleasant until suddenly, in the middle of the show, the music becomes jarring for a few minutes.

We already know that something is wrong.



It begins casually and even happily: a young man sings about the coincidence that brought him and his lover together, a family sings about their magnificent tourist trips around the world, and their child who has already waded in almost all the seas and oceans.

It seems that everything is possible, even though we are told not to enter the water above knee level, because it is dangerous.

Little by little, a somber tone mixes in the words, which reveals a sadder reality, mental restlessness, and private and collective grief, and a nature that can also take away.

One woman sings about her ex, an excellent swimmer who drowned while walking away from the beach.

Another woman sings about the dirt that fills everything and the insensitive behavior of the people around her.

Another one describes how she enjoys food and clothes that were produced at the ends of the world and reached the coast, like a kind of "parody of the Silk Road" in a kind of tasteless and characterless chain.

One man sings about the confined and oppressive code of conduct of the working world, which forces him to hide his feelings, pain and especially exhaustion.

On the beach, everyone is on the phone most of the time anyway, alienated from the environment.

All that's left is to sunbathe.

From "Sun and Sea (Marina)" (Photo: Andrej Vasilenko)

And at a certain point, a doubt creeps into the songs, a doubt of understanding that even the things on which this world stands do not last forever.

One woman sings, by the way, about the crazy weather that made Christmas look like Easter and vice versa;

It turns out that the engine for the whole plot is the eruption of a volcano that no one saw, which shut down the airports;

And finally, in one of the more poetic songs in the saga, two young women express their anxiety and grief over the expected destruction of the wonderful riff that is mentioned again and again, about the extinction of the bees, and about the inevitability of the body - and the faint hope that we can overcome all of this through technology, which can provide Just soulless 3D printed replacements.

All that's left is to sunbathe.



Contrary to what one might expect, "Sun & Sea (Marina)" is not a didactic work that is spoon-fed.

The viewer chooses himself where to drown, what to pay attention to and what to ignore.

In fact, it is much more than preaching ecological morality, but rather a monistic and beautiful song about people trying to build their lives, and protect them as much as possible, in the background of forces that are much stronger than them.

After all, even man can sometimes remain abandoned and powerless, just like a beach.

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Source: walla

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